You had the urbanites and liberals screaming out loud that the movie carried racial undertones and that it was promoting a very extreme perspective of Malay (and Islamic) nationalism.
Of course, the other side of the spectrum was equally as loud and they saw the movie as a revival of the Malay spirit. I have my own opinions about the movie, which I will not be discussing here.
What I do want to discuss though, is how all the discussion that surrounded Mat Kilau actually left me with some hope for how Malaysian society had matured in its ability to discuss sensitive issues like racism and religion.
Although a lot of the discourse did get heated (just doing an online search for different articles and opinion pieces in the media) I was pleasantly surprised to see everything was left as discourse and debate.
There were no...